Review of Ledge Rock Grille - Two Harbors, MN

March 8, 2010 by Chad.

Ledge Rock Grille

596 Larsmont Way

Two Harbors, MN 55616

This last weekend we spent a day up in the Duluth area scouting out wedding reception locations and dress shopping for my sister-in-law. After leaving Gooseberry Falls, we stopped at a place called  Larsmont Cottages on Lake Superior because their Ledge Rock Grille was a potential reception spot. We of course had to eat there to make sure it was a good fit.

Food: 4

There was an expectation, maybe even an elevated one, that I placed on dining at Ledge Rock. The menu had a more limited selection of choices but it had some really impressive high quality options like Ledge Rock Risotto and Huli Huli Chicken that made my mouth water looking at the menu. They also incorporated a wood fired oven to make fresh flatbreads and local flair like walleye cakes. Was it fair of me to raise the bar for Ledge Rock Grille? It certainly was. If you expect to sell high quality, expect to produce it as well.

When it came to ordering the flatbreads caught my eye. That, and a day of foraging on too many other treats, made it a simple valid option for dinner so I chose the Spicy Chicken Flatbread. When it finally arrived on the table, it looked wonderful. What a presentation! The flatbread was irregular shaped, denoting that it had been rolled out fresh for the meal. Chunks of chicken sat evenly mixed among half sliced cherry tomatoes and were held together with a thin layer of mozzarella and cheddar cheese.

Unfortunately, looks are only the first impression of a good meal because upon tasting it things went downhill.  Firstly, the grilled chicken was nowhere near spicy. In fact, I had someone else sample the chicken just to make sure my taste buds were still working but they reached the same conclusion I did. The flatbread was like eating hardtack, especially as you reached the last inch plus around the edge of the flatbread. My jaw was actually sore after finishing off the meal which is never a good sign. On the upside the cherry tomatoes brought a sweetness to the toppings. Maybe if there was some thin layer of sauce the crust would not have been so hard. It is something definitely needing immediate attention.

Luckily, I was sandwiched between my two kids and was able to partake in one thing I did like, a cheeseburger. What? A cheeseburger? That’s correct. The burger was huge, tender, juicy, and had a great grilled flavor to it. Not bad for the kids menu. If there is a next time I will pose as a child and get that.

Service: 4

A great server can make you overlook a relatively bad plate of food. They are the ones that have the relationship with you, the customer, so their empathy and care can smooth things out if things are not perfect. Our server smiled every once and a while for very short periods but for the most part I had the distinct feeling that she had other things on her mind that were spilling over into her work. When it is game time, you need your game face. She did not appear to be in the game that night.

Another negative to the experience was the time it took to prepare the food. For fine dining it is safe to assume that there will be a 45 minute wait for your meal. Good meals take time to prepare. We arrived after what is normally considered the rush time in dinner service and were seated right away. With about half the restaurant full of patrons at different stages of eating, I kind of expected the meal to arrive a little sooner. It took nearly an hour to get our meals. Of course, unhappiness is precipitated by sitting between a three and a five year old who already finished coloring the entire menu and were nearly two hours removed from their normal dinnertime. It would have been a better meal experience if it were served a little quicker.

Atmosphere: 7

Clean restaurants are important. It says a lot to a patron when you take the time and investment to make your place fresh and inviting. A warm color pallet on the walls, exposed stained wood beams, and a crackling fireplace are very nice to see. Everything looks recently remodeled or built simply because of the architectural  nuances throughout the room. Wine racks line the walls open spaces and are full and ready for customers to pick from.

The only atmospheric downsides are the lack of intimacy and lack of sound dampening that the big open room design naturally suffers from. I thought that if they had some kind of flags or sheer tapestries handing from the overhead beams they might just get over the sound issues. The only problem is that it would not seem to fit the higher class cottage motif throughout the whole complex.

Overall: 5

Overall, I was not impressed with the food or service, and no amount of dolling up the walls is going to replace the quintessential need to produce quality from the kitchen. Their menu looks stellar but the end product was flat, literally and figuratively.

Would I go there again? Not of my own choosing. There are better places to experience on the north shore of Superior.

If you are in the area of the Ledge Rock Grille and want to experience it for yourself, their website posts their menu.

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Digging For Recipe Gems…FOUND ONE!

March 5, 2010 by Chad.

Cooking for a family is definitely different than for just a couple. Where my spouse is at least game enough to try anything I choose to make, the kids on the other hand are never all that willing to try new things. I remember what it was like as a child. If we only ate what the kids liked then all of us would subsist on pizza, mac’n'cheese, and hot dogs for most meals. Make this your mantra when trying new things because they will love you more as they get older because you tried to expose them to the myriad of tastes that are possible in a world of eating. On to the crux of this post…

Earlier this week my son was lamenting that the chicken he was eating was a little firm and chewy for his tastes. It was cooked on the George Foreman  so it was pseudo grilled. That was understandable. Since there was a good special on chicken at the local grocery store, I had a fair amount of building material to make some more chicken meals. With my cookin’ mojo surging, I dived into some new recipes.

The Crock-Pot is a much maligned object in our house. Some old standards use it but nothing new. There was the focus of my search. It had to be cooked in the Crock-Pot. Slow cooker recipe books are a lot like most other recipe books. They are cluttered with items in the recipe, though intriguing, often do no appear in our kitchen. Who keeps dry tapioca around anyway?…err…wait, I have that. Anyway…on a whim, after paging through a couple books, I opened an old Crock-Pot owners manual from my last slow cooker(Rest it’s foodie soul, as it took a lethal header from the top cabinet down to the wood floor a few years ago). There in it’s nine poultry recipes was my target, Sweet’n'Spicy Glazed Chicken.

(Below is the recipe word for word from the Rival Crock-Pot Stoneware Slow Cooker manual)

____________________

6 – 4oz skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

1 Tbsp Oil

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

4 cloves garlic, minced

½ cup brown sugar

1 cup reduced-sodium soy sauce

1 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth

2 Tbsp lemon juice

½ tsp cayenne pepper

¼ cornstarch

½ cup water

 

In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add chicken and brown on both sides. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Put in Crock-Pot. In a small bowl, combine remaining ingredients, except cornstarch and water. Pour over chicken. Cover; cook on Low 7 to 9 hours(High: 3 to 4 hours).

When done, remove chicken breasts and turn Crock-Pot to High; cover. Combine cornstarch and water. Stir into liquid in Crock-Pot. Place cover slightly ajar on Crock-Pot. Cook until thickened (15 to 30 minutes). 6 servings.

____________________

Now, as anyone who enjoys cooking knows, a recipe is a guideline for culinary endeavors not a cardinal rule. Here is what I changed from it….

1. Cut the soy sauce down to 1/2 cup and substituted water with the other 1/2 cup. That was A LOT of soy sauce for taste. In fact, the recipe reports a sodium count of a staggering 1879mg as it is written. OUCH!

2. With no chicken broth in the house I took a can of chicken noodle soup and used the chicken broth from it with added water to account for 1 cup.

3. Substituted lime juice for lemon juice. Once again, this was out of necessity since I had one and not the other.

4. Rather than pre-cook the chicken I simply put it in the slow cooker raw. In four hours it was going to cook completely and I was aiming for moistness.

5. After cooking I cut the chicken up into small pieces, poured it into the thickened sauce, and served on a bed of white rice.

When I do this one again… and I will because it was yummy… I will consider adding pineapple and water chestnuts because with the soy sauce it has such an Asian feel and really needs something crunchy and tactile in it. Otherwise I would not change anything else. Very good and easy to make. Thank you, Rival Crock-Pot. I knew I kept that care manual for some reason.

Oh, and yes, I still had a little child insurrection but it was worth it.

 

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Dining Out Does Not a Budget Fit

February 27, 2010 by Chad.

Hello, everyone. It has been some time since my last food post so it felt like a good thing to do here on a Saturday morning. Not unlike that national trend of people tending to eat more at home rather than dining out, our household is choosing to make its own culinary masterpieces in the kitchen. Add to it the fact that I am still without work, there is just too little room in the budget to fit dining out at new and exciting venues.

Sometimes you just need to get out though so we dined out at a place last night for the first time in a long while that didn’t begin with “Mc” in its name or any of its fast food brethren. And… wait for it… it was at a chain restaurant. GASP! Being as such, I will not post a full review because that breaks with the tradition of this blog and all of my previously held beliefs that chain restaurants are mass produced vacuums of taste and creativity.

We drove into downtown St Cloud with kids in tow to find a place to eat where we could actually sit down without having to control our kids outside the confined din of the kids play area. Our choices, based on what we knew they would eat, were limited to Perkins Family Restaurant and Green Mill. We chose the Green Mill because we had not been there in years and, thanks to the street redesign on Hwy 23, there was no long access to the road Perkins is on going eastbound. Hey, the world is about convenience now and the roads were not convenient for me.

I said I would be brief so let’s review only the outstanding lows and highs that, while pulled center by mediocrity make this meal unremarkable.

First off the Highs:

- The portions are chicken on the kids meal of chicken strips were outrageously huge and high quality non presses meat. Kudos. What my daughter was able to eat only accounted for 1/3 of the meal.

- Our server was smart, very friendly, and had a great sense of table presence.

Now the Lows:

- My Italian sandwich had a plethora of disappointments. It was saturated with Italian dressing for one. I was expecting a tasty pop to the favor of the meat when I chose to have it warm instead of cold. Unfortunately the meat was flat and unremarkable.  Finally the accoutrement you would expect with an Italian sandwich were lacking. There is nothing Italian about a little shredded iceberg lettuce on top and a couple slices of tomato. Sadly, the Italian sandwich at Arby’s had more zest and flavor than this one.

- Ouch! Maybe it’s because I live in central Minnesota but should I pay over $6 for a Guinness when I can buy a 4 pack in the store for $8? This was not surprising but a point to make anyway.

Overall I was not swayed in my belief that chain restaurants are producing anywhere near the kind of quality that stand alone restaurants do. It is the difference between fun and fuel. This was McFuel.

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The Sun Yet Rises Day By Day

January 4, 2010 by Chad.

After nine years in the IT field I am embarking on a new and exciting direction. A direction that will help redefine who I am. A direction that will use my skills, talents, and personality more completely. What direction am I going? I have no idea but thanks to the immortal (and now deceased) George Harrison, I have this lyric to apply to my current state, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

I am standing at the precipice of the unknown and enlivened by the opportunity to engage in new challenges as of yet foreign to me. It is truly thrilling to me that I am given the choice to change directions after 12 years of serial employment, but the downside of all this is my lack of recent experience in hunting for employment. Consider the rust of 12 years a possible governor to my zeal, keeping me from engaging in the hunt as a veteran hunter rather than a relative novice. After all, that which we hunt is still the same animal but the tools and techniques have been augmented by the continued assimilation of technology into every facet of our lives. In other words, I need to relearn how to search for a job and what I am looking for. Remember if you don’t know where your going(don’t have a clue what you want) any road will take you there.

Well, this is of course a great way to re-engage my writing on this blog. For those who may be reading, I appeal to your experience, your knowledge, and your guidance. Like a good recipe, the outcome all depends on the journey taken to it not the attainment of the finished product. If you show little care to the process, then your outcome will surely be crap.

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Pay for Quality. It’s Worth it!

October 12, 2009 by Chad.

So today Robin was sick at home with strep. Her big plan was to make it into town and get the oil changed in her car. Well, it got to the middle of the afternoon so I decided to take the car in myself so she could continue to sleep off her ills. We have been going to a place on Highway 10 that has a good multiple change deal for a decent price when changing her oil. I tend to take thew car to Snappy Lube Plus because I am loyal to a mechanic there. The crux of this short post is just that. What motivates a person to go to a place where they get the best price when they might get better service elsewhere?

The economy is not yet recovered but it goes to show the level of quality people are looking for when places like Walmart are making a ton of money. The oil change I paid for was from a place where I know the people who work there. Was it the cheapest? No. It doesn’t have to be. Would the other place have done it well enough too? Maybe.

I guess I just like doing business with people I know and not with nameless, faceless corporations that can mass buy product for the cheapest price possible. I say this, but I also won’t deny I shop at places like Cub Foods, Target, and Menards as well. In those cases it’s convenience…which is probably another issue with modern society. I am not trying to fix that problem today. I just wanted to get people thinking about who they do business with and why. If there was someone you could trust but had to charge more for their products or services, would you go there? That’s a loaded question, I know. So, give it some thought and let me know what you think. Jeff Haskamp is my mechanic and I am more than willing to pay a little more to have him look at it. I trust him. That means a lot to me.

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Quick Bites at Decoys Grill & Bar - Hopkins, MN

October 12, 2009 by Chad.

Originally reviewed July 21, 2009

Decoy’s Grill & Bar, 1022 Main Street, Hopkins, MN 55343

I was down at the Raspberry Festival in my favorite hometown of Hopkins, Minnesota to partake in the Waterball competition hosted by the Hopkins Jaycees. While there the hungry bell rang so my friend Tracey Biegert and I stopped into Decoy’s for a bite to eat. Upon entering, we were assailed by a cacophony of discordant Karaoke performers. It was then that we remembered that there was a karaoke competition going on. Oh well.

We sidled over to a booth along the windows and ordered up a couple burgers. Dining with me is an experience of sharing. Thankfully Tracey realized this and we exchanged halves. The two burgers I sampled were the Olive Burger and a burger with blue cheese(The name escapes me and they do not have a web page that appears in Google with a menu for me to check…grrrr).

A guy in the booth ahead of us laughed at me when I breathed in the smell of the Olive Burger. Is that really all that odd? Olives have a distinct smell to them and I was checking to see if the burger had that smell. Little did I know it was an inside joke to his wife, who had her back to me. Back to the burger. I was disappointed that I could not pick out the smell at all. The patty was fresh ground and irregular which is always a good sign and the cheddar cheese was oozy on top. Overall it was palatable and might be worth trying again sometime.

The gem of the meal was the burger I ordered. The blue cheese was thick and added just enough tang to the burger that it complimented the beef. Bacon(?) on top was a textural bonus. This one I would order again in an official review someday. It may not be top 20 worthy but its definitely worth trying.

If the blue cheese burger was the gem, then the fries were the coal. They were inconsistent seasoning, bland, and slightly undercooked for my tastes. They existed someplace in between a jo-jo and regular table fry, with little to no crisp snap but clearly not as soft as fish and chips fries.

The best part of the meal besides hanging out with a good friend? My junior high/high school crush walked by the window as she was on her way to Monsters vs Aliens at the theatre. Thankfully she heard me pounding on the window. That was the first time I have seen or talked to Amanda in person since early college, but enough about me… go eat already!

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Review of the 209 Bar - Bemidji, MN

October 12, 2009 by Chad.

Originally posted July 14, 2009

209 Bar

209 Minnesota Ave NW

Bemidji, MN 56601

I was up visiting an event run by the Bemidji Jaycees at the local Legion. Normally I am pretty good at staying on top of eating within a reasonable dinner time. This evening in particular was an exception. At 8pm as the DJ spins music for the dueling karaoke challenge, I get the empty pit feeling. We are not talking about that snicketty snack feeling but the full-on empty stomach chasm feeling. To this I turned to my friend Will Fischer and asked him if there was a local restaurant that was very close. He pointed me in the direction of the 209 Bar. A mere half block walk found me at the doorsteps of the 209 and my stomachs salvation.

Food: 8                     Type: Bar Food

The menu was by no means extensive but as I sat down at the bar I saw what I needed, a good burger. Among the 20 items on the menu was an interesting burger called The Tony. It was a 1/2 pound cajun seasoned hunk of meat with pepper jack cheese and bacon on it. The best part? It was slathered with a thick robust BBQ sauce that was exceptionally mess but put a ribbon on what was a well prepared burger. The flavor of fresh ground beef was unmistakable and the well balanced myriad of seasonings and other toppings played a delightful tug of war on my taste buds. This varied flavor quality lends itself to less boredom and more exhilaration for the eating experience.

Under normal circumstances, I would have had an app or at the very least some fries to judge, but I had a limited time frame to get back to the music and then on my way back to the cabin in Crosslake so I had to be satisfied with the burger and chips it came with.

Had I been there with someone else or had four stomachs like a cow I would have tried out The 209, a burger of monstrous proportions.(2 pounds, 9 ounces….as if 2 pounds alone was not enough) They of course want a days notice to prepare the beast before you are able to slay it and at $24.50, it costs more than three times anything else on the menu. With that exception, everything is very reasonably priced.

Service: 5

A good bartender will talk you up when you are waiting and know when to leave you alone when you are intently watching the Twins game on the bar TV. This one was a bit of a talker, but he did a good enough job. He poured me a cold Finnigan’s Irish Amber which was smooth and a balance to the burgers sweet tingle. He did what was needed to feed me, but not outstandingly so. The food was prepared in a reasonable amount of time. Not much more to say about it I guess.

Atmosphere:4

It was a bar, with bar gear, bar decorations, and bar posters. Not much to go on here because it was not unlike a lot of bars I have darken the doors of in the last 15 years. The bathroom was clean and that is a big statement when at a bar.

Overall: 6

If you are a traveller and need to stop in Bemidji for a bite to eat then let me suggest the 209. I came there looking for exactly what I got, a tasty burger and a glass of beer. I left having filled the chasm in my stomach and still got back in time to listen to a little music before hitting the road.

Would I go there again? Absolutely!

Sherburne County Backroads is proud to call The Tony one of the unofficial top 20 burgers in the state.

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Review of Schmit Haus - Gilman, MN

October 12, 2009 by Chad.

Originally posted July 14, 2009

The Schmit Haus

10361 115th St NE

Gilman, MN 56333

While at an event near Foley, MN my interest was piqued  by a dining establishment that had been made out of a former auto shop in Gilman.  I had eaten a few years ago in a garage restaurant down in the cities that, for the life of me, I cannot remember the name of. (Bad Chad!) Anyway, what kind of a theme or dining gem would I be able to pull out of this experience? There really was only one way to find out.

Food:2

Here was a great opportunity for some very creative dining options, even within the scope of americana, that could have really made the food special. There could have been a German influenced infusion of options with sour kraut or schnitzel but there was not. There could be a classic burger joint feel with ice cream floats or classic americana but again there was not. In fact, the menu was limited, greasy and bland and that made me very disappointed. There is a lot of opportunity here for improvement or elaboration.

Can I use the terms limp and lifeless to describe the frozen meat patty I received that passed as a burger? Not cool. Normally I have something good to share here. Not today. Not here. The people of Gilman are the only people who are likely to come here because it is the only place to go in this little town. If you are the only place in town who do you have to compete with anyway. Maybe driving to Foley for dinner is not all that bad an idea.

Service: 4

Ok, our server tried. She really tried. She tried to do what she could with what she had.  She had patience with our children as they were beyond  nap time. She managed the floor well and the glut of people who came in when we got there, gliding amongst the tables making sure everyone CAN of  pop still had enough in it.  In the end, she was hampered by an exceptionally slow kitchen and that counted against her. So, the end resulting score has more to do with the kitchen side of the service than the server. It still added up to an hour wait for a few cheeseburgers and fries. There was no apologies for this time lapse from our server so I had to assume that this was par for the course here. More reason to question giving them a higher score in the service area.

Atmosphere: 2

Again this is an area of squandered opportunity. If you want to go someplace that remarkably looks like your crazy Uncle’s 70’s wood paneled basement rec room, then this place is for you. With a bar at one wall, booths opposite, and tables and chairs in between, this is pretty basic. The most interesting thing in the room is the wooden door with class windows that opens into a small quick access cooler for the server to store milk and other common restaurant perishables.

Tie a good food theme with decor and you have a winning combination for a point of destination dining experience. That is what people want.  I speculate whether the Schmit Haus is a very thinly capitalized restaurant because there was almost no attempt to spruce it up. I even speculate on whether it would have been more interesting if they had left it looking like a garage on the inside. Now, that would have been interesting. Add to it some automotive hardware from the scrap yard(but lovingly cleaned up). To any gearhead that would be a place to stop, a place to see, and a place to tell your friends about.

Take note, the bathroom needs a serious remodel and that is all I will say on that subject.

Overall: 3

A lot of room for improvement here. There is no definable direction in the menu, food, or the atmosphere. Food on the go at a snail’s pace was not appealing to anyone at our table or tables near us. I really don’t think that the people of Gilman are all that different from anyone in St Cloud or points throughout the state of Minnesota. This being the case, I think the people of Gilman probably would feel the same as I do about the Schmit Haus. It needs more…a lot more.

Would I eat there again? Unless it goes through a major remodel of operations, definitely not.

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Mi Famiglia’s Street Dog vs the Dome Dog

October 12, 2009 by Chad.

Originally posted April 23, 2009

This is a bit of a departure for me, if you consider the fact that I usually write reviews about sit down restaurants. Then again, if you consider the food alone a review could focus on Macaroni and Cheese dinners. It’s all a matter of scale.

In the last week I have had the opportunity to sample two dogs of vastly different venue and quality. For purposes of setting the stage I will give a short review of each and then a head-to-head comparison.

The Dome Dog:

For Anyone who has been to the Hubert H Humphrey Metrodome, the Dome Dog is a tradition of tubed meat made in our own state by Hormel. Not exceptionally long but more plump the Dome Dog is meal enough for my kids and even me. Taste-wise, it is a kin to the cheaper hot dogs one can buy at the grocery store. It is oily and exceptionally salty. The texture is softer and more even. Housing the hot dog is a doughy, dry, tasteless hot dog bun. The upside is that you can put all the condiments on it you choose as long as you fancy something other than ketchup, mustard, relish, or raw onions.

Overall, the experience left me feeling a bit ill. To be honest, I was done halfway through the dog. It’s no wonder the Dome nixed the “Dollar a Dog” nights at the Dome for a while. They are far more useful being thrown onto the field than to actually eat.

Mi Famiglia’s Street Dog:

For the record, these hot dogs are not called street dogs by Mi Famiglia Ristorante or Italian Market. Consider this to be a bit of artistic license because it sounds good. This hot dog was the impetus for writing this comparison and I wanted to race home in time to write this review before the taste was fully washed off my pallet.

For those who do not know, Mi Famiglia’s has opened up a New York style hot dog cart just outside their restaurant. A few years ago, the St Cloud City Council in their wisdom made an ordinance allowing street vendors for food. All of the food vending has centered around the weekend night bar crowd. This is the first I have seen one during the day.

On to the review as that is what I really must share. It was one of the most delicious hot dogs I have had in some time. The hot dog was much longer and skinnier. It had a full flavor to it and was texturally rough with skin on casing. The seasoning lingered in my mouth for nearly 10 minutes but that’s a good thing.

Really, the meat was one thing but they managed to complete the experience with a superior bun. It was almost baguette style with a crisp on the outside soft on the inside feel to it. It was also very fresh and moist in all the right places. At $2 a dog I was floored by the quality!

Head-to-Head:

The winner must be obvious from the individual review, but certainly MiFamiglia’s hot dogs are far superior to the Dome Dog. Is that really much of a surprise? Considering the fact that a Dome Dog is three times the price, you truly are getting a better, tastier deal from the hot dog stand on East St Germain in St Cloud and they are local.

You cannot avoid the Dome Dogs when watching a Twins game this summer, but take the time to stop at the hot dog cart in downtown St Cloud for a great experience.

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Review of Jimmy’s pour House - Sauk Rapids, MN

October 12, 2009 by Chad.

Originally posted April 21, 2009

Jimmy’s Pour House

22 2nd Ave No.

Sauk Rapids, MN 56379

(32…

Jimmy’s has been an anchor restaurant in St Cloud since 1977. Simply put, to stay in business that long you have to be doing something right. Jimmy’s offers a lot of selection and taste for the the diner looking for a warm, friendly, and underplayed atmosphere.

Food: 6

What they may lack in ingenuity they definitely make up for in properly prepared standards in Americanna and breakfast meals.  This is not to say they lack originality in all events as they offer both a Fire Alarm Burger and a German Burger. The former is a concoction of competing fire starters and the latter being developed from the local heritage. For this sampling we tried the Chipotle Bacon Burger with its pepperjack cheese, pico de gallo, and chipotle mayo on top of a juicy, hearty sized burger patty. At first, I was a tad disappointed that the chipotle flavor was eclipsed by the pepperjack cheese, but then I found the medely of flavors when combined with the pico was far more grand than chipotle alone would have offered. Yep, fooled me once. Maybe they should rename the burger to include some of its other finer aspects. It is like calling something a ketchup burger just because it has ketchup on it.

Also in this sampling was the Jack Daniel’s Glazed Chicken. Sadly, I was less impressed here. The chicken breasts were smallish and the Jack Daniel’s marinade was in short supply. One good glimmer of hope was the side option that came with it, red skinned mashed potatoes. Think of it as the saving grace for that dish.

Jimmy’s is a reasonably priced place to eat out though. Consider it for a lunch meeting or family dinner.

Service: 6

Was it outstanding? Naw. There is nothing bad to tell, but nothing great to tell either. The service was satisfactory.  Our server was well informed on the menu, was prompt enough, and came at all the normal times to check on us. I guess I was not feeling loved by the server or that she REALLY enjoyed her job. After spending so many times analysing every minor point of the dining experience for so long  you get spoiled when you experience exempliary service. I would not use this criterion for judging whether to eat at Jimmy’s or not. There is more there to see and experience than this and remember the way I sample is through a single experience to preserve the same experience other diners would have.

Atmosphere: 8

Some places exude a level of comfort when you walk in the establishment. It is like an non-corporeal spirit. Some places have it and some do not. Jimmy’s is such a place. There is an ease about the establishment that makes it feel good.

The theme is a hybrid between Irish Pub and golf, but it is not overplayed. What I mean by this is that there is a level of acceptable decoration and then there is clutter. Jimmy’s tastefully decorates their restaurant in golf relics a kin to the mid 80’s to late 90’s need to decorate chain restaurants with antiques [cough…Applebee’s cough cough]. It works.

The dining area is sectionalized well enough enough that it breaks up the dining area. This allows for large groups as well as intimate dining.

Overall: 7

Would I go back? Surely. Jimmy’s has a large loyal local following for good reasons. They know how to make the food that people like to eat and have a clean and comfortable environment in which to dine, meet, drink, and play.

Check out their website for menu and hours.

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